Food Symbolism in The Invisible Man

Summary: Discusses symbolism used in the novel The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. Describes how food acts as a reoccurring motif at various times throughout the novel to bring back a sense of nostalgia.

In the mystifying novel Invisible man food is being used as a window to a man's past. Food acting as a motif reoccurs various times throughout the novel to bring back a sense of nostalgia. The novelist Ralph Ellison makes substantial use of gustatory imagery or ol factory imagery to enhance his theme. Such use of gustatory imagery helps the reader to identify with the protagonist.

This particular novel is about an unidentifiable man's struggle, to find an identity in a harsh and very manipulative society, who in his search to become successful by society's standards realizes that he is indeed invisible. Although not physically invisible, at the end the reader and the protagonist can conclude that invisibility is not actually a state of not being seen, but it is the misconceptions that people continuously have of you. In Invisible man, one might entwine invisibility with race, although...